STAT+: Drug industry payments to eye docs boosted Medicare spending on pricier treatments
Ophthalmologists who accepted payments from drug companies were less likely to prescribe a cheaper medicine to treat an eye disease that causes blindness in older people, rather than a pair of more expensive alternatives, according to a new study. This led Medicare to spend an additional $643 million during a recent six-year period.
Specifically, 28% of the physicians who received money were believed unlikely to prescribe Avastin, an older cancer medicine that is often used to combat age-related macular degeneration. By comparison, 46% of the physicians who did not accept industry payments were more likely to prescribe the medicine, instead of two costlier treatments that have been approved specifically to treat the eye disease.
As a result, Medicare shelled out an estimated $642.8 million from 2013 to 2019, presumably due to the company payments, according to the study, which was published in JAMA Health Forum. The researchers examined Medicare Part B data that encompassed nearly 21,600 ophthalmologists who accepted money from Roche and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which sell the pricier eye treatments.
